Band:	Apothys
Album:	Onslaught
Style:	Blackened death metal, Progressive death metal
Release date:	2008
A review by:	Jeff

01. Empyrean Unrest
02. Eventide Summoning
03. Deviatory

Tell me that I'm too emotive, but I'm always really happy and proud to review the album of one of the old and loyal members of our Metal Storm community. Today we will talk about "Onslaught", the demo new of Apothys, a band from USA with Mr Carion Misery on the vocals! Ok, I promise that I will try to be objective and let you know if our guy and his band mates are able to do good things but anyway I'm happy to do this review!? And you know what? I think that's they're not bad at all?

With only three songs and no more than fifteen minutes of music, "Onslaught" is short but it's already enough to see that the band is a young promising combo. First, I didn't find any real similarity with other famous bands. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that the band doesn't have any influences but for sure, they're not a new copycat of In Flames, Opeth or whatever. Apothys has a lot of personality and their mix of Progressive Death with Black Metal influences is really good. The three songs are strong and powerful, the guitars riffs are loud and heavy but really melodic too. Apothys plays melodic Death Metal but when I talk about this kind of music, I'm not talking about all the Swedish bands which play something a lot more commercial and easy of access. No really here we're in front of a strong Metal which is not so brutal and extreme but which has balls. On the other hand the songs of this demo all have great melodic riffs, and we even have some progressive influences there and there which give some deepness to the music. Add the really good voice Black/Death of Carion Misery and you're finally in front of a really good demo.

So what's wrong here? Nothing serious really. The songs are well recorded (it could be better but this is really honourable), the musicians are good and the lead guitarist is able to play really convincing soli. As you know now Carion Misery is also a good singer and the songs are well done so really I'm expecting a lot from this band. Though, if I can give an advice to the guys, I hope that they will be able to have a cover and all what we need to convince a label to be signed in the future. When you see that some demos are clearly more professional than some signed releases, you can be sure that they have some strong arguments to convince labels, Apothys should work on this point now.. Though here at least we have good music but ameliorations on the design, on the pictures of the band etc should be welcome, if of course Apothys wants to be signed. But this is not so important when the music is good and the music is good here!

In the end, I can tell you that "Onslaught" is a good demo! The songs are not bad at all and I'm quite sure that the band will be able to write a great first album. Let's wait a bit but we will keep an eye on these guys, after all it shouldn't be so hard to have some news from them? Have a look on their MySpace page and if you like their music, some encouragements will be welcome!